Xu Xiaomai's Love

Chen Sheng, who was frustrated in middle age and burdened with debt, met the light that would illuminate the rest of his life - Xu Maimai. This redemptive love is sweet but fragile, built on a promise he can't keep: a complete break with the past. However, the past never let him go. When his father was seriously ill, he returned to his hometown, but was involved in the mystery of an old classmate's daughter who jumped from a building. In order to seek the truth, he had to join forces with his rational and sharp confidante Mu Xiao, and was forced to face his absurd and broken youth and the failed marriage in which his first child was buried. With a calm scalpel-like writing style, the novel cuts through the survival dilemma of an ordinary man: he is struggling with multiple identities such as debtor, father, son, and friend, and is caught between responsibility and self, reality and ideal, redemption and sinking. The three women - Mai, who symbolizes redemption, Mu Xiao, who represents reason, and his ex-wife, who is the ghost of the past - are like three mirrors, reflecting his contradictory and complicated soul. This is not only a man's emotional dilemma, but also a spiritual slice of a generation. The author uses amazingly delicate daily writing to extract the ultimate sweetness and cruelty of life from hot pot in the ward, night market stalls, campus tragedies and late-night quarrels. When tenderness becomes a burden and salvation becomes like a shackle, can a tired soul wearing a mask find a true home in the dust?